Ramallah
There are Palestinians of all generations in the streets of Ramallah.
Children on their parents' shoulders carrying flags twice as big as them, old men, young people, T-shirts with the inscription "1948", keffiyeh on their heads, signs "
for our right of return
" in hand.
At half past twelve, the sirens of the Nakba - "catastrophe" in Arabic - sound: 74 seconds, to mark the past 74 years.
Here, like every May 15, we commemorate the anniversary of the forced expulsion of more than 750,000 Palestinians during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948. For many, this day reopens the wounds of the past.
Ruqayya Nazzal, surrounded by two friends, in traditional dress, watches the crowd, which is not very abundant.
At 82, she says she was 8 years old during the Nakba.
“
I was in Qalqilya, a city that was at the center of historic Palestine.
My parents always told me how they used to travel to the four corners of the country from our house.
There, seventy-four years later, the city is backed by an 8-meter concrete wall and our refugees have not returned to their land
.”
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In addition to the usual slogans, signs with the inscription "
Your silence is complicit
".
"
That's for the 'double standard' of the international community
," explains Jalal Abu Khader, 27, who comes from Jerusalem.
Here, when the Palestinians use slingshots, or Molotov cocktails to resist the occupation, we are not talking about heroism or resistance like in Ukraine.
All weapons are sanctioned and we talk about terrorism.
Today, we are also here to criticize the lack of action by the international community.
Because the Nakba is not just a memory, it happens every day: when Palestinians are killed, when they face expulsion, when their homes are demolished.
»
the journalist's death prompted a unanimous statement from the UN Security Council, which 'strongly condemned' it
At the top of a building in the square, the portrait of Shireen Abu Akleh is displayed on a panel where advertisements are usually found.
This year, the Nakba ceremonies take place in a very particular context: just two days after the burial in Jerusalem of this star journalist of al-Jazeera who was shot in the head on Wednesday morning in the Jenin camp while that she was practicing her profession and that she was wearing a bulletproof vest with the inscription "press".
“
We are all still in mourning
, continues the young Palestinian.
But at the same time, our determination, our resilience, our anger and our rage push us to mobilize to bring justice to him
.”
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The funeral of the one who has been nicknamed "the Voice of Palestine" was violently disrupted by the Israeli police, who attacked the coffin bearers - the latter having received dozens of baton blows.
Shireen's coffin tilts 45 degrees, before being barely lifted.
After the outcry over these images, broadcast live on television, and the unanimous condemnation of the international community, the Israeli police announced on Saturday that they were opening an investigation - the results of which will be published "
in the coming days
", according to a communicated.
"Accidental shot"
As for the murder of the journalist, the author is not formally identified to date.
Witnesses on the spot - the journalist's colleagues, one of whom was also injured - immediately blamed the shooting by Israeli soldiers.
The Israeli army initially cleared the soldiers in operation, citing only one scenario, “
the possibility of Palestinian fire
”.
At the end of the day, the Minister of Defense was much less affirmative.
From now on, Israel accepts the possibility of the responsibility of one of its soldiers, but only “
via an accidental shooting
”.
But according to investigative journalism site BellingCat - which analyzed open-source data relating to the famous journalist's death - the gunshots, "
slow and deliberate suggests targeting rather than firing bullets aimed at another object or person
", and the geolocation of Israeli troops in relation to the location of Shireen Abu Akleh corresponds more to the angle of fire than that of the Palestinian armed groups.
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Still, the journalist's death prompted a unanimous statement from the UN Security Council, which "
strongly condemned
" it.
Encouraged by the United States, this very rare unanimous position of the Security Council on a subject concerning Israel also calls for "
an immediate, thorough, transparent and impartial investigation
".
“
Behind his death, there is in any case a message for all Palestinian journalists
.
A bit as if it were to dissuade us from doing our job and to silence us, so that the Israelis can continue their crimes with impunity, whatever they are, but out of sight of the cameras
,” says Dia al- Adam, Palestinian journalist and presenter for the Palestine TV channel.
This is not the first time that Israel has attacked al-Jazeera journalists.
A year ago, the al-Jalaa tower in Gaza, which housed the offices of the Qatari channel and those of the American news agency AP, had been the target of an Israeli strike.
She had collapsed, live, on television.